Pro edition
Session Plan.
Emailed once a date is held. Of the 12 h between the van arriving and the van leaving, 5 h 15 min is tracking. Every studio overruns for the same handful of reasons, and writing them down in advance is cheaper than any piece of gear.
Where the day goes
| Time | Block | Length | What it is for |
|---|---|---|---|
| 09:00 | Load-in | 60 min | Van at the kerb, doors wedged. Sixty minutes for a four-piece and it is ninety for anything with a keyboard rig. Nobody sets up gear during this hour; it is carrying only. |
| 10:00 | Kit up and tune | 40 min | Drums first because everything else waits on them. Heads changed before the day, not on it — a fresh head needs an hour to settle and nobody has that hour. |
| 10:40 | Sounds and a run | 35 min | Mic placement and one full pass of the easiest song. The pass is for levels and for everybody hearing the room, and it is occasionally the take. |
| 11:15 | Tracking, block one | 150 min | Two and a half hours is the longest anybody plays well. Two songs if they are ready, one if they are not, and knowing which is the job. |
| 13:45 | Lunch, properly | 45 min | Away from the desk. The session that skips lunch loses the two hours after it and this is not a superstition. |
| 14:30 | Tracking, block two | 165 min | The best block of the day. Everybody is warm, nobody is tired, and the room has stopped being unfamiliar. |
| 17:15 | Overdubs | 105 min | Vocals in the booth, guitar doubles, anything needing headphones and quiet. The air handling comes back on between takes from here. |
| 19:00 | Rough mixes | 45 min | Forty-five minutes of balance, no processing worth the name. You leave with something to play in the car, which is the only honest test. |
| 19:45 | Teardown | 75 min | Longer than load-in, always, because tired people carry slowly and cables have moved. Out by nine. |
Bring these
- Fresh heads, already onFitted and settled at least a day before. A head changed at 10am is still stretching at 2pm and it will pull sharp through the best block of the day.
- Spare strings, spare sticksTwo sets and two pairs. A trip to the shop on Rankin is forty minutes of a booked room.
- A tuner per playerNot one shared tuner. Passing a tuner round is four minutes a song and it compounds into most of an hour.
- The arrangement, decidedWhich verse is cut, whether the bridge repeats. Deciding it here costs a block; deciding it at rehearsal costs nothing.
- A hard driveAnything with a USB-C port. Files go home with you the same evening, always, and there is no charge and no waiting.
Leave these at home
- The pedalboard you have not used in a yearIt will not work, it will take twenty minutes to find out, and the fix will be an amp you could have plugged into at 10am.
- Anything wider than 33 inchesIt does not get up the stairs. Ask first — the answer takes one email and saves a van hire.
- A second guitar amp "just in case"The booth holds one. The second one lives in the lounge, in the way, and gets carried down again untouched.
Four decisions, made before the day
Each of these costs nothing at rehearsal and costs a block of the day if it arrives late.
Click or no click?
Decide before the day. A click added at hour four means re-tracking hour three. If two players cannot see the drummer — which is any arrangement of eight or more in this room — it is a click, and knowing that at rehearsal is worth more than any argument about feel.
Live vocal, or a scratch?
A live vocal in the room means bleed on every drum mic, and that is a commitment rather than a mistake: it makes the take a take. A scratch keeps the option open and costs a little life. There is no wrong answer, only a late one.
How many songs?
A prepared four-piece does two songs in a day and occasionally three. Booking four is how a day ends with four half-finished tracks, which is worse than two finished ones and costs the same.
Who is in charge?
One person decides when a take is done. It does not have to be the singer and it should not be me, but it does have to be someone, and it has to be agreed before anybody plays a note.